


[collab] Cement Wings, And Other Improbabilities

by Hananobira, silly_cleo



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Found Family Feels, Gen, Greek Mythology Fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-08 17:00:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1949136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hananobira/pseuds/Hananobira, https://archiveofourown.org/users/silly_cleo/pseuds/silly_cleo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers rescue a man from a Hydra lab. It's not Bucky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **SPOILER WARNING:** Set after Winter Soldier.
> 
>  **CONTENT WARNINGS:** : Contains references to a character being tortured by Hydra. Also discusses the canon issues various Avengers experienced as children, including alcoholism, spousal abuse, child abuse, death of a parent, and parental abandonment. These traumatic experiences are described in the same level of detail as Winter Soldier canon. Please contact us if you have any further questions, and exercise discretion in reading.
> 
>  **ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:** We were originally considering a story about DS9, and kalakirya and klb both generously donated their time to help me talk through my perspective on Ferengi culture. Unfortunately, that is not the fic we decided on in the end, although I may have to write it someday anyway. But their assistance is most appreciated!
> 
> Opalsong was invaluable in helping me work out the backstory for this fic and various characters' internal motivations. She also shouted "Be better!" at me when I got distracted from writing, without which I probably would not have finished this on time. Thanks, bb! <3
> 
> silly_cleo did such a wonderful job with this podfic. You don't even know what a treat you're in for, guys. Her Darcy voice and her Thor voice are PERF. She also patched over most of my plot holes; any that remain are entirely my fault. Thanks for a wonderful first Pod_Together experience, Cleo!

Download:[MP3](http://pod-together.parakaproductions.com/2014/Cement%20Wings,%20And%20Other%20Improbabilities-Hananobira,%20silly_cleo.mp3) || [M4B](http://pod-together.parakaproductions.com/2014/Cement%20Wings,%20And%20Other%20Improbabilities-Hananobira,%20silly_cleo.m4b)

Length: 1:03:12  
Cover Art by Hananobira  
Written by Hananobira  
Read by silly_cleo

*****

**The Storyteller:** Daedalus, the master who designed this labyrinth. Whose mind produced these dizzy passages. Daedelus the genius, who invented ships which could sail under the sea, fireworks which would knock down a wall, lenses, that set together could see as far as the stars. Fantastic machines. He fell so far, he fell so far from grace he finished a broken man. Making the same little clay figure over and over: a child with wings.

 **The Dog:** A child with wings? Who was that?

 **The Storyteller:** The one thing Daedelus made he had no control of. The one thing he ever truly loved. Icarus, his son.

\-- from the movie “Daedalus & Icarus”

*****

They found the man in a secret basement lab underneath a Hydra facility in Frankfurt. With the discovery that Hydra had infiltrated SHIELD, and the latter’s collapse into total chaos, every available government agent (FBI, CIA, DHS, MI-6, INTERPOL -- representatives of alphabet soup agencies the world over) had been tasked with hunting down Hydra power bases around the world, neutralizing their operations, collecting their data for analysis, and leaving the buildings empty, smoldering ruins.

Steve’s primary focus was still on finding Bucky, of course, but he would never turn down the opportunity to wipe another Hydra site off the map along the way. 

He and Natasha had become a surprisingly effective team over the past couple of months. She would use her underground connections to find rumors of men with metallic body parts near known Hydra facilities -- Steve didn’t know how she found this information and frankly was quite content with not knowing -- and the two of them, often with Sam along as backup for the trickier cases, would investigate the building in question. Sam would keep a lookout from the air while Natasha cracked the security, Steve would bash some heads in, Natasha would garrote anyone who got past Steve, and in the end another Hydra foothold would be eliminated and the world would be a slightly safer place than it had been the day before.

But it had been five bases in two months, and still no legitimate leads on Bucky’s whereabouts.

So when Natasha walked into the kitchen at Avengers Tower one morning with that deadly serious look on her face, Steve immediately set down his coffee and his newspaper and gave her his full attention.

“Frankfurt, Germany,” Natasha said, dispensing with the usual pleasantries. Steve could appreciate someone who knew when not to waste their breath with a “Good morning” when Bucky’s life was on the line; it was yet another thing he valued about working with Natasha.

“Hydra has a site a few doors down from the European Central Bank. They’ve been doing a little hacking, monitoring government accounts throughout Europe, hiding their cash flow around the globe. Because the site primarily seemed to be used for financial, rather than military or intelligence, purposes, we’d ranked it pretty low on the threat scale. But it turns out there might be more to the site than we originally thought.”

She set a manilla folder down on top of his newspaper and flipped it open, revealing several pages of documents and a photograph of a bespectacled middle-aged man. “Dr. Andreas Lasker. A well-known geneticist and Hydra supporter. My source says he’s been spotted entering and leaving this Hydra base several times over the last few weeks, which makes no sense if it’s only being used as a data center.”

Steve nodded. “It wouldn’t be the first time Hydra used a secret facility to hide a second, even more secret facility underneath.”

“There’s more. Apparently an unconscious man was carried into the building in the early hours of the morning last Thursday. It was dark, so my source didn’t have a good angle on the man’s face, but he says he had some kind of metal device on his upper body.”

Natasha, Sam, and Steve were on a plane to Germany within the hour.

The first layer of the facility had been easy enough to infiltrate. From the outside it seemed like any other business office that lined the busy streets of downtown Frankfurt, an old stone facade outside, gleaming marble floors and a coolly professional receptionist inside. They’d left her tied up and unconscious behind her desk, then made similarly short work of everyone in the offices down the hallway. Steve felt a pang of guilt at tranqing the employees there, most of whom looked to be in their early twenties and doing a little hacking on the side to pay their university tuition. Ninety percent of them probably had had no idea who they were really working for. But speed was of the essence when dealing with Hydra, whose top operatives always had at least three evacuation routes out of any emergency.

It had taken Natasha all of forty seconds to find the secret access panel down to the lower levels, and that was when they first met resistance. It was a fairly small base by Hydra standards, only a dozen armed guards and half as many scientists in white lab coats.

As always Steve was torn between the need to deal as little damage as possible, and reach the basement laboratory as quickly as he could. _Bucky. I have to find Bucky._ was the refrain cycling around and around in his head as he charged down the hallways, pausing only to smash his shield into the chest of any guard foolish to stand in his way.

Natasha and Sam moved more slowly down the halls behind him, taking care to secure each guard with plastic wrist ties as they fell. No Hydra employee was to be allowed to escape. With SHIELD out of commission, for lack of a better option, the United States Air Force had assumed responsibility for anyone captured in a raid on a Hydra base, and the prisoners taken here would be transported to a naval base in Turkey for interrogation and, if necessary, detention to await trial. Each one of these guards and scientists potentially possessed information that could be used to wipe any further trace of Hydra from the planet.

There was a transparent glass door at the far end of the corridor, and through it Steve could see a hospital bed surrounded by unfamiliar equipment. There was a dark-haired man lying there, and from the bed came the gleam of metal.

“I’ll check out the lab,” Steve called to Natasha and Sam. “You got things under control here?”

Natasha did a standing backflip, catching the man in front of her in the jaw with her boot and sending him spinning to the floor, unconscious. She paused only to shoot Steve a distinctly unimpressed look before whirling, dropping into a crouch, and sticking out a leg to swipe the next guard’s feet out from underneath him.

Sam looked up from where he was tying up another guard, this one dripping blood from where Sam had solidly punched him in the nose. “I think we’ll cope,” he said dryly.

Steve nodded and spun on his heels, barrelling down the hallway and pausing only to fling his shield to the right, where a door had just opened to reveal a blonde woman in a white lab coat. The shield caught her a glancing blow on the temple, bounced off the door frame, and twirled right back into Steve’s waiting hand, as the scientist crumpled to the ground.

He yanked the glass door open, heedless of the way the hinges creaked in protest and the door groaned to a crooked halt. “Bucky?” he called as he dashed to the bedside, desperate to catch sight of the man’s face.

It wasn’t Bucky.

Steve had to stop for a moment to collect himself, the disappointment striking him harder than any physical blow the guards outside had dished out. Once again, he’d failed Bucky.

The man lying on the bed had olive skin and a round, youthful face surrounded by a riot of tight brown curls. His eyes were closed and his mouth drooped. Perhaps he was sleeping naturally, or perhaps he was drugged, but Steve suspected his lack of consciousness had far more to do with the bandages that covered nearly every inch of his body that was visible to Steve’s eyes. White cloth wreathed his arms and his chest, and the few flashes of exposed skin were marked with scars in various shades of angry red to faded white.

Whoever this man was, he had been badly hurt. And not just once, but repeatedly, over a long span of time.

Because he was not Bucky, he had _two_ flesh arms, both covered in bandages. He also had, bizarrely, two…

… were those wings?

Curled up at the base of each shoulder were two silver-white blades made of a smooth, gleaming ceramic sort of material. Each was about two feet long and narrowed down to a softly rounded point at the end. The right one, however, was melted, bubbled and twisted, a nasty black scorch mark running the length of the outer edge.

Another victim of Hydra, then. Someone else whose life had been ruined by their boundless prejudice and ambition.

Fighting a sudden violent surge of nausea, Steve turned away from the man to the machines that littered the rest of the room. A few of them, such as the IVs and the heart monitor, were clear enough in their purpose, but the banks of computer screens showed nothing but incomprehensible graphs and charts labelled with an unintelligible mixture of medical jargon and Hydra code words. He would need to wait for someone more familiar with modern technology to decipher their function.

He turned on his heel, ready to head back out into the hallway and support Natasha and Sam, but they were too quick for him. Sam was standing in the doorway, eyebrow raised at the lopsided angle at which the door was hanging. Natasha had just finished hog-tying the last of the guards and was rising from a crouch, wiping her hands on her leggings.

Sam surveyed the room, the bed, and its occupant. “So who’s this?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Steve replied. “But it looks like they’ve been experimenting on him for a while.”

“Nice wings,” Sam said. “I’m feeling a little professional jealousy here, actually.”

Natasha walked into the room and approached one of the computers. She considered the screen thoughtfully for a few seconds before reaching out, alternately typing words into the keyboard and clicking buttons with the mouse, expertly opening screens and scrolling through the data they displayed.

“Project 48393, codenamed ‘Icarus’,” she said. “Apparently he appeared out of nowhere in the sky above the Aegean Sea, six miles off the north-west coast Samos. He tried to fly to shore, but with the damage to his right wing he can no longer support his own weight in the air, and within seconds he had fallen into the sea. It was early morning, so he was spotted and picked up by a local fisherman. Everyone assumed he was a mutant who’d been abandoned by his family, so they put him in state care. He was living in an orphanage on Samos for five years before Hydra found him.”

A moment of silence as Natasha clicked through a few more screens. “What really intrigued Hydra is the damage to his right wing. The damage was caused by extremely high levels of radiation, high enough that he should have died, and Hydra wanted to learn the secret of how he survived. He appears to have remarkable healing powers. That’s what they’ve been testing here. They’ve been deliberately injuring him, over and over again, trying to figure out how he heals himself.”

She clicked back and forth between two different screens, brow furrowed, before finally continuing. “If his healing abilities are as strong as they suspect, this man… this man is basically immortal. Hydra has tried everything short of decapitating him -- they’ve removed a finger and a toe and even a lung -- and nothing they’ve done to him has taken longer than three weeks to heal.”

For a moment, the three of them turned to consider the figure lying still and silent on the bed in the center of the room.

Steve swallowed. “If those are just the most recent of the injuries…”

“Poor bastard,” Sam whispered, shaking his head.

Natasha simply looked at the man impassively for a moment, face deliberately blank, before turning back to the computers. “Hydra was hoping they could find a miracle drug in his DNA. They thought --”

She paused. “That’s… Huh.”

“What?” Sam asked.

“The _project_ isn’t named Icarus,” she said slowly. “The _man_ is named Icarus. He’s been awake and coherent a couple of times over the past six months, and can only communicate in modern or ancient Greek. He calls himself Icarus.”

The three of them turned their eyes back to the man sleeping in the hospital bed. Aside from the movement of his chest with each sighing breath, he still lay completely motionless.

“What are you saying, Natasha?” Steve asked carefully.

“A man who speaks a variant of Ancient Greek, with wings made of some sort of biomechanical ceramic that we’ve never seen before, falls from the sky, covered in radiation burns, as if he’d been at the heart of a nuclear reaction. Hydra… Hydra thought this was the real Icarus from Greek legend.”

Sam whistled. “Just when you thought you’d seen it all. I mean, it makes sense. If Thor really exists, why couldn’t Icarus as well? Hell, might as well throw in the Tooth Fairy and the Boogeyman while you’re at it.”

Steve rubbed his forehead with a thumb. “We can sort this out later. I’ll call the Air Force and let them know we’ve successfully taken the facility. Nat, you download everything you can get off the computers and then wipe them clean. Sam, secure the prisoners for transport.”

“What are we going to do about the archangel Gabriel here?” Sam asked.

Steve shrugged. “Dr. Banner knows a little something about both radiation and mysterious healing powers. We’ll take him back to New York with us.”

*****

The man -- Icarus? -- remained unconscious for the flight back to New York, where Dr. Banner took one look at his injuries, winced, and gave him another dose of painkillers. “If he can survive losing major organs, I don’t think we have to worry about side effects from the medication, and it would just be cruel to subject him to this level of pain while he heals.”

So the man was given a private room down the hall from Dr. Banner’s lab, where JARVIS monitored him twenty-four hours a day under orders to notify the doctor or the nearest Avenger if he so much as twitched. The sedatives kept him so far under, though, that he never moved a finger, simply lay deathly still and quiet on the bed, except for twice-daily treatment by the very expensive, very discreet nurse Stark had found him.

In the downtime between missions cleaning up the remnants of Hydra and SHIELD operations around the world, Natasha dug through the data gathered at the Frankfurt base, but found no more clues as to the man’s identity or origin. Just in case, she consulted Banner about some of the specialized medical jargon, but Hydra apparently had no more proof than she did who the man was, apart from the wings, the Greek, and his sudden materialization in the sky over the Mediterranean. With other, more urgent matters occupying her attention, she half-forgot the mysterious man sleeping three levels down in Avengers Tower.

Until three weeks later, when the first _daidalon_ arrived.

Natasha, Clint, and Sam were sparring in the gym on the thirtieth floor -- Clint had returned from his mission in Southeast Asia and immediately instituted a ‘No Superhumans Thursday’ policy in the gym, claiming that the sight of Steve’s perfect washboard abs depressed the hell out of him; and Stark and Banner were holed up in their respective labs, unlikely to surface for at least another eighteen hours -- when JARVIS interrupted them with a sound like a human clearing its throat.

“Ahem, pardon this interruption, Agent Romanov, Agent Barton, Sergeant Wilson, but could I trouble you to investigate something on the twenty-fifth floor for me?”

Natasha paused from her position perched on top of Clint with her legs wrapped around his shoulders. In that moment of distraction, he tried to use his weight advantage to throw her off, but she simply squeezed her thighs tighter around his neck in warning, and he went limp underneath her in surrender. She smirked at him. “What is it, JARVIS?” she asked.

“There is an unknown object moving down the hallway from the elevator toward Dr. Banner’s lab. Whatever it is, it is not registering on my cameras. Instead, there is a blank spot in my visual sensors of about 25 centimeters in height, moving along the floor at a pace of 2.8 kilometers per hour. It is emitting a faint electromagnetic field of a type I have never before encountered.”

Sam had been sitting on the bench at the side of the room, catching his breath after a five-mile jog on the treadmill, occasionally calling out pointers and good-natured heckling as Natasha and Clint fought. He took one last swig from his water bottle, undraped the towel from around his neck, and rose to his feet. “We’ll head right down there,” he said.

Natasha rolled off of Clint, who promptly jumped up and trotted over to the weapons cabinet on the wall. He snatched his short-range bow and a full quiver from it, then jogged to catch up with Natasha and Sam at the elevator bank.

When the elevator doors opened onto the twenty-fifth door, they instantly spotted the object JARVIS had been describing. It was a small statue of pearlescent ceramic, painted with dark orange lines suggesting robes, sandals, and jewelry. A small, round head with two dots for eyes rose out of an inhumanly long neck. Its arms were spread open as if lifted to the heavens, and the only articulated moving parts on it were its legs, which marched at a steady, unwavering pace down the hall toward the labs.

It was easy enough to catch up with the thing, and the three of them soon stood over it, studying it in curiosity. It made no notice of their arrival, but continued to walk at the same even speed as before.

“You ever seen anything like this before?” Sam asked Clint and Natasha.

“No.” Natasha shook her head.

“Me neither,” Clint said.

“I gather that you three are capable of seeing the object?” JARVIS asked. “It remains invisible to my cameras. There is no change in the electromagnetic signal which it emits, which I still have not been able to identify.”

“It’s a statue,” Sam explained. “Made of some kind of porcelain, maybe? Actually, now that I think about it, it looks like that same stuff Icarus’ wings are made of. Don’t you think?” He directed the question at Natasha, who nodded thoughtfully.

“It _is_ headed in his direction,” she said. “JARVIS, where did it come from?”

“Unknown,” JARVIS responded. “I first noticed the object when the elevator dropped off a Stark Industries employee on the seventh floor, and the button for the twenty-fifth floor was pushed in what should have been an empty elevator. Scanning the elevator revealed the blind spot in my cameras and the faint EM signal. Because I do not normally monitor Avengers Tower for this type of field, I have no records up to that point of its whereabouts or movements.”

“Well, what use are you then, JARVIS?” Clint quipped.

“I will remember that statement the next time you need hot water for a shower, Agent Barton,” JARVIS said.

Sam snickered at the expression on Clint’s face. “I have a feeling you’re going to regret that joke.”

“I do already,” Clint muttered.

“Any ideas what this thing could want with Icarus?” Natasha asked, but Sam and Clint just shrugged in response.

They watched the statue in silence for a few seconds. It kept treading mutely down the blue carpet.

Experimentally, Clint stepped directly in its path. Without pause, the statue neatly swerved to avoid him, making a precise semi-circle around his feet and continuing straight down the middle of the hallway toward Icarus’ room.

Clint stepped in front of it once more, this time bending over and pressing a single finger to the center of its chest. At the pressure, the statue momentarily faltered. Then it made a low humming noise and Clint jumped back with a curse.

“Shit!” he said, shaking the hand that had touched the figure, which resumed walking as soon as the obstruction was out of the way. “That burned!” Clint said, examining his finger. “I’m fine, no damage done, but that thing can heat up pretty fast.”

“Hmmm,” Natasha said.

The statue walked right past the door to Dr. Banner’s labs without a second’s hesitation. That left only three doors: a janitorial closet, a radiology labeled labeled “Caution: X-Ray Radiation”, and Icarus’s room. That answered _that_ question.

When the statue was about ten feet from Icarus’ door, Natasha heard a muffled noise from the room beyond. She jogged ahead of the statue and cracked the door open to peek inside.

Icarus was tossing and turning on the bed, head rolling back and forth on the pillow, low moans emanating from his mouth. Natasha turned back to the three figures making their slow way down the corridor. “I think he’s waking up,” she said.

As soon as the words left her mouth, she heard another groan from Icarus. As she turned back to look at him, his eyes snapped open. His face contorted in a grimace of pure rage, and the next sound out of his mouth more closely resembled a howl of rage. “Δαίδαλα?! Άι στο διάολο, Πατέρα! Πως τολμάς, στέλνοντας τα παιχνιδάκια σου να με φέρουν, σαν κανένα κοινό σκλάβο!” he roared. He raised his left arm, yanking at the IVs dotting his right.

Natasha dashed over to his side, trying to hold his left arm down. “It’s okay,” she said soothingly. “You’re safe. We’ll protect you. But please lie back down; you’re badly hurt.”

His eyes, when they met hers, were those of a boy’s, big and brown and framed with long, black lashes. But he snarled and weakly attempted to free his arm from her grasp. “Αφήστε με! Δε θα επιστρέψω εκεί! Δε θέλω να έχω καμία σχέση μαζί του!” he screamed.

“You need to stay still,” she said, forcing him back down.

“Nat, heads up. Five feet behind you,” Clint warned from the doorway to the room. She turned her head to watch as the statue continued inexorably forward.

“He really doesn’t seem to like this thing,” Sam said. “I assume the plan is to keep it away from him, but how are we going to do that?”

“I’d recommend against touching it,” Clint said wryly. He briefly surveyed the room, then he grabbed an extra blanket lying on a table next to the door. In one smooth move, he shook the blanket out, scooped the statue up in it, and wrapped it around several times. He dropped the statue onto the table and leaped back as quickly as possible.

They waited expectantly. Once again, the statue gave a low, muffled hum, but a few seconds later even that ceased. It didn’t move.

Almost in unison, Natasha, Clint, and Sam breathed out sighs of relief. Beneath Natasha’s hands, Icarus’s arm went limp.

She turned and smiled at him. “You’re okay. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He eyed her warily. His voice, when he spoke, was thin and scratchy with disuse. “Έσης ποιοι είσαστε? Που είμαι?”

“That’s a ‘no’, then,” Clint said under his breath.

“JARVIS, how’s your Greek?” Sam asked.

Somewhat snippily, JARVIS said, “I must confess with regret that Sir did not anticipate that I would be called upon to translate dead European languages, seeing as he has never been one to spend much time reading the great works of the Western canon, and thus I am not equipped with any type of sophisticated Ancient-Greek-to-English translation software. I beg your patience while I run an analysis of his words, calling upon the resources of the literature and linguistics departments of 157 major universities around the world. Results in 12.8 minutes.”

“Uh, guys,” Clint said. “I think this thing’s burning through the blanket.”

Sure enough, the acrid smell of burnt polyester was beginning to waft through the room and the top of the blanket seemed to be glowing red-hot, then crisping black. The table underneath the statue sagged inward, melting under the heat.

“ΌΧΙ!” Icarus cried. “Δεν θ`αφήσω το βρώμικο δαίδαλο σου να μ`ακουμπήσει! Δε θα επιστρέψω, δεν υπάρχει περίπτωση!” 

Then his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed back into the bed, apparently having exhausted himself back into unconsciousness.

“I have a couple explosive arrowheads with me,” Clint said. “Let’s see if one of those will take care of it. First, we need to get it out of here, at least fifteen feet away. Sam, help me move this down the hall.”

The two of them each grabbed a corner of the table, lifting it up and carrying it a safe distance down the corridor...

...in the direction of Banner’s lab.

“JARVIS,” Natasha said, “tell Dr. Banner that there will be an explosion, and he shouldn’t let himself get too… startled. But in a few minutes we’re probably going to need him to check on his patient.”

“Understood,” JARVIS said, just as Clint and Sam dashed back into the room. Sam hung back, by the bed, while Clint pushed the door closed but for the barest sliver, pulled his bow off his shoulder, notched an arrow, and took aim. He loosed the arrow, which shot down the hallway, lodging itself in the blankets pooled around the statue, which by now were beginning to curl and flake away in the heat to reveal flashes of lustrous white.

A breath of stillness, then the arrow detonated, sending a shockwave of heat and deafening sound roiling down the corridor. The table collapsed, flames licking at the carpet. An alarm began to sound. The fire sprinklers in the hallway switched on, dousing the fire and extinguishing it within moments.

“That do it?” Sam asked.

“I am no longer detecting a heat source in the hallway,” JARVIS said.

Cautiously, Clint opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, Sam and Natasha following close behind. They stood over the smoking ruin of the table for a moment.

Clint used the end of his bow to brush some of the ash away. The statue was warped and twisted beyond recognition. One leg still held its original shape, but the head had been blown off halfway up the neck, and its torso and and arms had crumpled like an aluminum can.

“Good thing I was here to save the day. You guys’d be lost without me. Remember that fiasco at Chapultepec Castle, Nat?” Clint joked.

“I never would have gotten arrested if you hadn’t been caught trying to bribe that judge. Considering how many times I’ve had to bail your ass out of trouble, I wouldn’t get too cocky,” Natasha shot back.

Sam rolled his eyes. “You two sound like my sister’s kids sometimes. Do I need to separate you? No cookies for dessert until you make up.”

Dr. Banner stuck his head out the door of his lab, thankfully not looking at all green. “JARVIS says it’s okay to come out now?”

“You’re good, Doc,” Sam said. 

They divided up the tasks at hand. Clint headed back to the gym to clean and put away his bow and quiver. Banner went to check up on Icarus, who was luckily not hurt -- or at least not hurt any more than he already had been. He confirmed that the man had, indeed, just succumbed to the stress and the painkillers.

Sam called Steve, then had to spend ten minutes reassuring him that, “No, Steve, we’re fine... The carpet’s kind of singed but none of us got so much as a scratch, I promise... Steve, you’re in a meeting with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, you can’t skip out on that… I _swear_ , we’re _fine_ , _for God’s sake_ go apologize to the Vice-President!”

For about two seconds, Natasha considered calling Tony herself to tell him to come up and check out the damage. Then she did the sensible thing and called Pepper, who said in her usual no-nonsense way that she’d take care of it. “And besides, considering how Tony’s experiments usually end up, we have a construction crew at the tower about once a month. We’ve put all three of the contractor’s kids through college; might as well make a solid contribution to their grad school funds as well.” And that was that.

*****

After showering and changing into clothes that didn’t reek of damp ash and burnt electronics, they reconvened in the family room on the thirty-sixth floor with the massive flat-screen TV, surround sound speakers, and decadent leather sofas -- might as well be comfortable while they debriefed.

Clint was standing in the corner, peering into the depths of the combination fridge-toaster-thing (considering Tony had built it while completely plastered on tequila after a screaming fight with Pepper, it probably had half a dozen other functions besides; Sam was vaguely surprised it hadn’t gone all HAL 9000 and tried to toss them out a window for their own good yet) and pulled out a bottle of beer. He turned and waved it at the room at large, raising an enquiring eyebrow.

Bruce and Steve’s polite _no, thank yous_ were drowned out by Sam’s heartfelt, “After a day like today, I _definitely_ deserve a cold one!” So Clint grabbed him one, and a third for Natasha at her subtle signal.

After another moment of waiting, he prodded, “Stark?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, sure, thanks,” Tony said without looking up from the tablet he was furiously typing into from the armchair in the far-right corner of the room. “Actually, could you pour me a Scotch? The Lagavulin in the purple bottle on the counter behind you. On the rocks.”

Clint rolled his eyes and handed him a beer along with everyone else.

Part of being a natural-born leader was knowing when to sit quietly and let your team have a few minutes to enjoy their beers in peace, so Steve waited until they’d all had a decent chug and sagged back into the plush cushions of the sofas before asking, “So, Tony, what was that thing?”

“You do realize I’ve had it for less than an hour, right? I mean, we’re talking _me_ here, so I deduced more about it than a lab full of scientists at DARPA could figure out in a _week_ , but let’s be realistic,” Tony said.

“Tony.”

Tony waved his tablet at Steve. “Yeah, yeah. One of these days I’m going to get sick of being so unappreciated and I’m just going to pack up all my toys and go home, and then where will you all be?

“But anyway, this thing, whatever it is, is not made of any substance known to modern science. Some sort of ceramic material? But there’s definitely an organic component in there. Bruce, I’ll need you to take a look at the chemical analysis later, help me figure out how this stuff is produced. Or grown. However they make it.

“The weird thing is, there’s no… hardware, circuitry, mechanical bits, anything you’d expect to be inside it, making it operate. As far as I can tell, it’s the same solid ceramic compound all the way through.”

Bruce nodded thoughtfully. “It’s very likely Icarus’s wings are made from the same substance. When we X-rayed them three weeks ago, we couldn’t find any bones or joints or metal parts -- any mechanism that would make them move -- even though Hydra’s database said that the fisherman who found him witnessed him flapping his wings in an attempt to fly to safety. Whatever stuff this is, it doesn’t work like any kind of living creature or technology that we’re familiar with.”

“JARVIS, what was Icarus saying?” Steve asked, looking up at the ceiling, as he still hadn’t gotten out of the habit of doing when addressing the AI.

“As Hydra’s research indicates, the man identified as ‘Icarus’ does speak a variation on Ancient Greek. Although the sample size he gave us was too small to know for certain, his language does seem to show remarkably little variation on Ancient Greek as we know of it in historical and archeological sources.

“The man was, understandably, somewhat disoriented, asking questions such as ‘Who are you?’ and ‘Where am I?’ He also expressed most vociferously that he would not go back ‘there’ and would not have anything to do with ‘him’, although the place and the individual in question were not named.

“Most interestingly of all, perhaps, were his first words upon regaining consciousness: ‘ _Daidala_? Damn you, father! How dare you send your little toys to fetch me, like some common slave.’”

“ _Daidala_?” Steve asked.

JARVIS explained, “It is the name of a festival of reconciliation held in honor of the goddess Hera in the ancient city of Boeotia. According to Pausanias, Zeus made a wooden statue in an attempt to win Hera’s affections back after an argument over an unknown disagreement.

“Most importantly to our purposes, perhaps, is the second definition: in Greek mythology a _daidalon_ , or _daidala_ in the plural, was a statue of a god, each with moveable limbs and imbued with the powers of the god whose form it took. They were supposedly built by the legendary Greek craftsman Daedalus.”

“Daedalus,” Steve said. “As in, the father of Icarus. Who also made his wings.”

“Precisely, Captain.”

Sam frowned. “So when we got in that thing -- the _daidalon’s_ \-- way, were we preventing a father from reaching his son?”

“Icarus didn’t look that happy to be reunited with good ol’ dad, if you ask me,” Clint said.

“Even so,” Sam disagreed, “should we have stopped a father from trying to bring his child home? Daedalus doesn’t know us from Adam; he has no way of knowing we aren’t going to hurt his son.”

“From a medical perspective, Icarus is a grown man and is, as far as we can tell, compos mentis,” Bruce said. When everyone turned their attention to him, he took his glasses off and began rubbing them on the hem of his shirt. “I see no reason, legally, why he shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions for himself, and right now he seems to be pretty set against the idea of speaking to his father.”

“Even if he weren’t compos mentis, I’d still think twice about sending him back to his father when he’s so obviously unwilling,” Tony said. “Kids can have all kinds of valid reasons for running away from home. I tried to run away half a dozen times as a child, but the bodyguards always found me and dragged me back.”

As always when Tony talked about his childhood, there was a long, uncomfortable silence. Steve looked pained.

“Oh, come on,” Tony insisted. “I’m pretty sure that none of us grew up living the American Dream of a middle-class family with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence and a puppy. Barton, weren’t you raised by monkeys or something? And we’ve all seen the Saturday morning cartoon with Cap’s backstory. How about you, Natasha? Were you rocked to sleep every night in the warm bosom of a kind-hearted Russian _babushka_?”

Sam shot a glance at Natasha, because he could guess enough about her childhood to know Tony was treading on thin ice here. But Natasha, of course, was strong -- she wouldn’t let a jibe that weak shake her composure.

“That’s enough, Tony. You’ve made your point,” Steve snapped, and oh no, if those two started sniping at each other again they’d be here all night.

Sam (who was pretty new to this whole ‘Avengers’ thing, but had already figured out that it was best to cut off any Steve and Tony squabbles at the root, before they had the chance to grow into massive oak trees of childish pettiness and passive-aggressiveness and, on Tony’s part, liver failure due to extreme alcohol poisoning) jumped in to preserve the peace. He raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Hey, okay, okay. So. The general consensus seems to be that we respect Icarus’s wishes in the matter and we aren’t going to try to contact his father, right? Everyone okay with that?”

He looked first to Steve, who eventually nodded, although he didn’t look happy about it.

Natasha shrugged. “Works for me.”

By this point, Clint was well-trained to follow her cues in the field. “Me too.”

It was Bruce’s turn next, and he wouldn’t quite meet their eyes as he said, “From a medical ethics perspective, it’s the choice I have to make.”

Tony leaped to his feet. “Great. Glad we sorted that out. Are we done now? Because I need to get back to the lab.” Without waiting for a response, he left the room, already typing furiously into his tablet before he reached the door.

Bruce rose as well, wiping his hands on his trousers. “I do have a couple of time-sensitive projects I should probably check on,” he said apologetically, and then he was gone too.

Clint, Natasha, Steve, and Sam were left sitting there staring at each other. After a moment, Sam said, “You guys got any plans for the evening? I vote we watch a movie. Steve, what’s next on that list of yours?”

Steve -- and was he blushing? that was adorable -- smiled and said, “Disney’s still around, right? You should show me some of their more recent films. Bucky and I saved our allowance for two weeks so we could see _Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs_ , and it was… I’d never seen anything like that before. It was the highest-grossing film of all time, back then. There were two more, soon after that, _Pinocchio_ and _Dumbo_ , but I never got around to them, because first my mother died, and then the war broke out, and…” He trailed off, swallowing hard.

That was the thing about Steve. Upon first sight, he was all determination and resolutely square jaw, the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan, so it was always surprising when the facade slipped and he showed the vulnerability underneath. He was barely a grown man, really. What was he in terms of years actually lived, twenty-five? Too young not to know any better, at any rate.

Unlike Clint, who had long ago learned from experience not to show anyone where to stick the knife. Or Natasha, who would gracefully bend her neck, exposing her throat to the enemy, only to snap shut like a steel trap the moment they got too close. Her insecurities were her greatest weapons.

Sam? Sam was a pretty chill guy when you got down to it, probably the most mentally well-adjusted of the lot of them.

“Oh, man, you’ve never seen _The Lion King_. Or _Peter Pan_. Oh my God, **_Pixar_** ,” Clint breathed.

“We’re watching _The Little Mermaid_ ,” Natasha said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “Steve, go make us some popcorn.”

“Why do I have to do it?” Steve asked, but he was smiling, already rising to his feet.

“You have the super serum; you have to do the heavy lifting,” she explained.

“Yeah, the three of us worked out, and then saved the world from evil _objet d’art_ ,” Sam said. “Whereas _someone_ has been sitting on his ass all day in meetings with a bunch of boring old white dudes.”

“Speaking of asses, how will you ever pick up chicks if you aren’t careful to maintain definition in that bodacious bod? Chop, chop, get to it, solider,” Clint drawled lazily from his spot on the sofa.

“I don’t even know what that means!” Steve protested, but he was laughing as he left the room.

In the end, the movie proved a good bonding experience, or whatever you’d like to call it. Steve and Sam sat on one couch, ostensibly so they could share a bowl of popcorn, even though five minutes in Steve was totally enraptured by the movie, eyes wide and mouth open, barely blinking. Sam just shrugged and set the popcorn in his own lap, where he could eat it all himself. He was a pragmatist, after all.

On the other couch, Natasha stretched out lengthwise and put her head in Clint’s lap, silently demanding he comb his fingers through her hair. She had never struck Sam as the most touchy-feely of people -- he suspected anyone else who tried to pet her hair would lose the offending fingers -- but once he’d read Clint’s file he’d understood that this, as in any gesture Natasha made, was deliberate and calculated to fit a purpose, demonstrating with her proximity that she trusted Clint, that she didn’t blame him for Loki’s manipulations, that they were still partners. Clint, who had an ironic quip for everything, never said a word about this, but Sam could read the gratitude in his eyes easily enough.

Sam had always thought _The Little Mermaid_ was a little too girly for him -- too many goopy romantic bits. But maybe it wasn’t as bad as all that.


	2. Chapter 2

“Jane. Hey, Jane! Earth to Jane. Yoohooooo!” Darcy chimed.

It took Jane a moment to raise her eyes from the mass spectrometer results and brush away the cobweb of mathematical possibilities that clogged her brain. “What?” she said absently.

“Finish up whatever you’re doing here and pack your bags; we’re leaving for New York in three hours,” Darcy said.

“What? _Why?_ ,” Jane asked.

“Once again our assistance will be instrumental in saving the world! Or, well, your assistance. Not that I don’t play a vital role in all this by making sure you don’t turn into a mole person down here in this lab. Like a naked mole rat, but with really cute shoes.”

“Why do they need us? What’s happening?”

“They want to consult you on the _daidala_ thing,” Darcy said. At Jane’s look of blank incomprehension, she sighed. “The statues of Greek gods that keep attacking New York City. Geez, don’t you ever watch the news? Oh, wait, never mind, dumb question, forget I asked and _get packing_.”

“Greek gods?”

“Yeah. The Avengers found Icarus. You know, dude with the wings, flew too close to the sun, took a nasty fall -- please tell me you paid that much attention in English class. Anyway, the Avengers have this guy, and his father Daedalus wants him back, and he’s sending these statues to get him.

“The thing is, no one has any idea where the _daidala_ are coming from. They just _pop!_ out of the sky at random moments and start trying to fight their way toward Icarus. But apparently whatever they’re using to travel between worlds is totally different from your Einstein Rainbow Bridge thingies--”

“The Rainbow Bridge is a type of Einstein-Rosen bridge,” Jane corrected for the twentieth time, knowing full well that Darcy knew better and was just winding her up.

“Whatever. At any rate, _this_ is not _that_ , and they want you to tell them what it is. So get off your butt and let’s go!”

The prospect of studying an entirely new type of wormhole, one not even the Avengers had ever seen before, had Jane up and on her feet, frantically shutting down equipment and shoving paperwork into messy piles.

“Oh, yeah!” Darcy said as Jane locked the door to the lab. “Speaking of gods with daddy issues, that reminds me: call your boyfriend; he needs to meet us there.”

“Hey!” Jane said, indignant on Thor’s behalf.

Darcy flapped a hand at her dismissively. “Just calling it like I see it, girl. Anyway, the Avengers want a perfectly chiseled Greek statue of a man to fight actual Greek statues. The _daidala_ have been attacking Avengers Tower non-stop for five days now, and they’d like Thor to smash things with his hammer for a while so everyone can take a little break.”

They rushed back to their flat and threw some clothes into suitcases (“Jane, you forgot clean socks again! Honestly, if your head weren’t screwed on so tight…”) and dashed to the nearest airport, where a SHIELD jet was idling on the tarmac. It was early afternoon UK time, but Jane managed to get a little sleep as they crossed the Atlantic, and before she knew it she was stepping off the plane and into Thor’s waiting arms.

“Jane!” he said. “It is good to see you again.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” Jane said, muffled by the leather of his breastplate.

“As much as I long to pass many hours acquainting myself with everything that has happened in your life since our last meeting, I fear we must make haste from here. The Man of Iron has sent a flying device to collect us and carry us to the battle.”

Stark had indeed sent a helicopter to fetch them, and the pilot touched down only long enough for them to clamber on, take the headsets he shoved at them, and buckle their seat belts, before he sent them lurching back up into the sky.

“So here’s the sitch,” Tony suddenly said into their ears. “The _daidala_ keep getting progressively bigger, stronger, and nastier, and this one’s bigger, stronger, and nastier than Dr. Banner when you eat the last of the ice cream. Pretty damn nasty, is what I’m saying. JARVIS says this one’s based on the god Hephaestus. You know, blacksmith of the gods, made lots of weapons of iron? So it has an impenetrable skin of some kind of metal alloy and we can’t figure out how to crack it open. In other words, _totally stealing my schtick_. If I could figure out how to serve papers to another dimension, I’d sue this Daedalus guy for copyright infringement.”

As he spoke, the helicopter wove in and out of the skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan. A few minutes later, it took a sharp diving turn, and Avengers Tower came into view. Jane’s eyes immediately caught the _daidalon_ — it was hard to miss the sturdy pewter-colored figure slowly climbing up the west wall of the building. Iron Man zoomed around it, aiming repulsor blasts at its hands and feet, but each time he managed to dislodge one limb, the statue simply dug even deeper into the building’s facade with the other three, continuing its plodding, inexorable ascent.

The Falcon, too, was twisting and turning in the air above the statue, occasionally taking aim at its hand- and footholds with some kind of gun. As Jane watched, he shot twice, and the statue’s right foot lost its grip. A moment later, however, the thing simply kicked in a new hole a few inches higher and kept climbing.

Hawkeye had apparently found a perch somewhere in the vicinity as well: an arrow struck the _daidalon_ in its left hand and exploded an instant later, taking a chunk of concrete with it. But the hand emerged unscathed and, moments later, made a new grip for itself.

“Fall back thirty paces!” Thor shouted into his microphone — Jane was not the only one who winced at the booming voice clipping out their headsets. “I will dislodge the man of clay with Mjolnir.”

“No, wait!” Tony said. “Five hundred people work in this building, and they haven’t all been evacuated yet. Not to mention the thousands of people in all the surrounding buildings. And, oh, yeah, that’s right, I’ve already spent over a hundred million dollars on Avengers Tower and I’d rather it _didn’t get blown up again_.”

“I will be precise in my strike,” Thor said, but his brows knit together. He eyed the _daidalon_ a moment before taking aim, sending Mjolnir hurtling toward it. The helicopter jolted in a way that made Jane’s stomach drop to her feet and she clutched at the armrests of her seat. The hammer struck the _daidalon_ in the side, sending it spinning through the air, and it landed on the ground with a distant “whump!” of shattering concrete. But even as it crashed into the ground it flailed its arms and legs in the air, and seconds later it was back on its feet and attempting to scale the tower again.

“Everything is set up here.” A new voice cut into the comm system. “Agent Williams, you can bring the helicopter in now.”

“Yes, sir,” their pilot said, and the helicopter banked right, spiraling up the length of Avengers Tower and jerking to a landing on the helipad on the roof. As Jane and Darcy climbed out of the helicopter, an icy cold wind nearly knocked them off their feet, and Thor had to grasp them each gently by the upper arm and escort them into the interior of the penthouse.

A man with brown hair and glasses was waiting for them inside. “Dr. Foster?” he said. “I’m Bruce Banner.” He held out his hand.

She shook it. “Oh, hi! Nice to meet you.”

“Let me show you what we’ve got,” he said, and walked her over to the back wall, where a jumble of scientific equipment appeared to have been thrown together in a rush. They had to take a semicircle around a hospital bed standing in the center of the room, where a nurse was hanging up IV cables feeding various liquids into a sleeping man with wings, one badly burnt: Icarus, Jane presumed. 

“We’ve brought up everything we think you’ll need from the lower labs, but let us know if anything is missing. Name whatever you need, and Tony can find it for you, no questions asked. The hope is that the Avengers can stop the Hephaestus _daidalon_ out there, and in the meantime you can find out how to close the portal that is bringing them to Earth before any more come through.

“If either of these objectives fail, we evacuate with Icarus by helicopter to LaGuardia, and from there retreat back to Tony’s lab in Malibu where you can continue working on a solution. The _daidala_ are persistent, but they’re slow, and if we keep hopping around the planet we can probably hold them off for quite some time.”

Jane nodded, already half-ignoring Dr. Banner in favor of avariciously eyeing the shiny new tech waiting for her. Even Thor kissing her gently on the cheek and whispering, “I must go join my comrades in battle, my love. Be safe, and be clever,” before walking out the door of the penthouse and throwing himself off the edge of Avengers Tower hammer-first, only earned a distracted and belated, “Oh! You too,” from her.

For the next hour, she totally lost herself in her work, taking every kind of reading she could think of and furiously scribbling mathematical equations onto the whiteboard she’d had a SHIELD agent carry up for her. Dr. Banner, she discovered, was the ideal lab assistant, because she barely had to open her mouth to say, “Pass me the tablet with the graviton—“ before it was in her hand. This was a definite step up from working with her usual lab assistant, with whom conversations general went something like:

> Jane: Set the electric potential to 180 volts.  
>  Darcy: The what?  
>  Jane: The electric potential on the continuous dynode electron multiplier. It needs to be  
>  set to 180 volts.  
>  Darcy: English, Jane. _Speak it_.  
>  Jane: (with a heartfelt sigh) See the plate along the wall there?  
>  Darcy: The one above the silver tube-y thing?  
>  Jane: Yes, that one. It has a dial labelled “Voltage”. Turn it to 180.  
>  Darcy: You could have just said that in the first place, _geez_.

She tuned it all out: the periodic explosions and reports of gunfire, the victorious shouts when a blow landed and the vicious swearing when it failed, the increasingly frantic moans from Icarus and the soothing murmurs of the nurse beside him. She didn’t even realize people had been shouting her name over the headset until Darcy shook her shoulder.

“C’mon, Jane, pay attention!”

“What!”

“They want to know what’s happening,” Darcy said.

Jane huffed out an impatient breath. “I don’t know! These portals or wormholes or whatever they are, aren’t even registering on the equipment here. As far as we can tell, one moment the _daidala_ aren’t here, and the next moment they are. Whatever technology Daedalus is using, I’m going to need more sensitive sensors and far more time to get a handle on it.”

“I’ll just ask the _daidalon_ to take a break, then,” said a man’s voice over the comms. Hawkeye, Jane presumed. “There’s a great coffee shop down the street, right? We can give him directions, recommend the cappucino.”

“That’s a plan. JARVIS, pull up a map to that coffee shop on the corner.” That was Tony’s voice.

“Sir--” And that was definitely JARVIS’s, sounding pained.

“We have to pull back.” The words came simultaneously from the headset on Jane’s head and a man standing about five feet to Jane’s left, and she turned to see Captain America, Black Widow, Dr. Banner -- the rest of the Avengers -- standing in front of the penthouse’s elevators. They all looked exhausted, with black bags under their eyes.

“We’ll regroup in Malibu, and Jane can continue her research at the lab there,” Captain America said. “This _daidalon_ here will take weeks to reach us there, and we’ve never seen more than one at a time on Earth.”

Dr. Banner shook his head. “We’ve always disposed of the previous _daidala_ before the new one showed up. I find it highly unlikely that there is some sort of limit on the number of _daidala_ that Daedalus can send to Earth at any one point. Considering they seem to appear at roughly twenty-hour intervals, it’s far more probable that the limiting factor is the time it takes him to prepare a portal, rather than the number of _daidala_ that can coexist on our planet at the same time. If we retreat, he’ll probably just drop another one on top of us in Malibu, and then we’ll have _two_ of them to deal with.”

Captain America studied him thoughtfully for a moment. “You’re suggesting we give up fighting them.”

“It’s probably the most sensible option right now,” Black Widow said. “We still haven’t determined that they intend to harm Icarus. Why not let this one approach him and see what it does? We can always retreat if it tries to hurt him.”

Dr. Banner nodded. “It’s worth a try, especially now that we’ve got Thor here. He might be able to communicate with the _daidalon_ in Allspeak.”

“That’s not what you thought when we discussed this before,” Captain America said.

Dr. Banner sighed. “I still don’t feel good about the idea of forcing Icarus to confront his father when he’s so clearly unwilling to, but we can’t keep this up indefinitely. Tony pointed out earlier that there are thousands of lives at risk if we continue to resist these things. They don’t go out of their way to injure anyone, but I doubt they’d hesitate to hurt any civilian that got in their way.”

Tony cut in over the comms. “Hey, don’t speak for me. I personally am always happy to have an excuse to zoom around looking awesome and blowing shit up, especially in the cause of keeping teenagers safe from interfering parents.”

“Stark--,” Captain America started, but gave up on the attempt. “Okay. Hawkeye, what do you think?”

“Nat’s right,” Clint said, “we ought to at least try and see what happens when those things get what they’ve come for. Besides, I never let anyone see me retreat. It’s undignified.”

Black Widow’s face was, as per usual for a mission, the picture of professionalism, but was there a hint of a smirk about the corners of her lips?

“Nat, I know exactly what you’re thinking about, and if you don’t stop it I’m going to tell everyone about that oil baron in Qatar. He wrote her _poetry_ , guys. ‘A waterfall of scarlet--”

“All right, that’s enough.” Captain America cut in, “Thor, do you think you can communicate with this thing?”

They all took their positions on the roof. Captain America thanked Icarus’ nurse for his dedication to his duty, then dismissed him with a handshake so that he and Thor could wheel Icarus’ bed out onto the landing pad, where he could be loaded onto the helicopter at a moment’s notice. Black Widow sent the helicopter pilot away and took the pilot’s seat herself, ready to fly everyone away if an immediate retreat did become necessary. Tony zipped over to the skyscraper next door to pick up Clint and drop him off at the helicopter (Tony first attempting to carry Clint bridal-style, and Clint promising to turn sensitive parts of his anatomy into pincushions if he tried). Clint strapped into the seat in the back of the helicopter next to Jane, Darcy, Falcon, and Dr. Banner, while Tony joined Thor and Captain America in flanking Icarus’ bed protectively.

Then all they could do was wait.

They felt the _daidalon_ before they saw it, and heard it before they felt it, the pounding of its hands and feet as it methodically climbed Avengers Tower. Each thud grew closer and closer, louder and louder, until Jane was about to crawl out of her skin with tension. She felt so helpless here, unused to as she was to scientific mysteries she could not begin to puzzle apart.

Finally, the _daidalon_ ’s head appeared over the ledge of the roof, followed by one arm, then another. It heaved itself onto the concrete and stumbled to its feet. The Avengers members with super-strength fell into battle positions, ready to leap into action the instant it made an aggressive move.

 **Bang** , went its metal feet, rhythmically rattling the concrete beneath it. **Bang, bang, bang**.

On the bed, Icarus gasped and his eyes snapped open, fixating on the figure approaching him. He stared at the _daidalon_ , unmoving, eyes wide and face turning pale.

“Metal creature, identify yourself and your purpose in this realm!” Thor called out to it.

The statue paused in its march toward the bed, its head swiveling toward Thor. A moment of suspense, then it said something Jane couldn’t understand. _Guess it’s literally Greek to me_ , she thought, a touch hysterically.

“Well met, Daedalus of Kriti. I am Thor Odinson, prince of Asgard. What is your business here?”

Another pause, another short answer from the figure.

“Icarus himself objects most strongly to speaking with you, kind sir, and we wish to respect his wishes in this matter.”

The statue’s face was flat, blank, and unmoving. But the voice it emitted was beginning to sound outraged.

From behind Thor, Icarus snarled something furious at the _daidalon_ in Greek.

The statue’s head snapped around to look at him. This time it took longer for it to respond, and when it did, its voice was softer, almost wounded-sounding.

Thor said, “Although it is not our intention to seem inhospitable, Icarus has expressed a desire for you to leave this place, and him. As you can see, he is well cared for and well protected here. If you wish to be assured of his safety in our hands, I will gladly give you a tour of our facilities before you depart. You have experienced for yourself the efforts we will expend in the attempt to guard his wellbeing.”

This did not make Daedalus happy. But whatever he said in response, Icarus apparently liked even less, and the two of them exchanged several heated, rapid-fire sentences.

Jane groped to her left until she found Darcy’s hand, clasping it tightly with cold, clammy fingers. Black Widow, Clint, Falcon, Dr. Banner... everyone else on the roof appeared calm and alert, watching the scene with professional detachment, so it was comforting to feel Darcy’s hand shaking in her own.

“JARVIS, keep us in the loop here,” Tony said.

“Daedalus is attempting to apologize for Icarus’ ending up here on Earth,” JARVIS explained. “It seems he was originally intended to join his relatives in Olympus, but there was an accident with the portal, and Icarus was redirected here.”

“Ah, yes, Olympos!” Thor exclaimed. “I have heard of this realm from my father. It is no wonder you could not travel there by portal, for it has been closed to the outside world these several years due to a conflict with the Eternals.”

Daedalus and Icarus both seemed taken aback by this news. The _daidalon_ spread its arms, palms up and open, and spoke to Icarus in a pleading tone. Jane didn’t know what he said, but for some reason it made Icarus howl in combined fear and rage. The statue took one step toward him, and Iron Man and Captain America moved to block it, postures tense and unyielding.

“Daedalus said he was endeavoring to send Icarus to live with his cousin Perdix in Olympus,” JARVIS said. “In Greek mythology, Perdix was a clever inventor, perhaps even more clever than Daedalus himself. When Perdix invented the saw by notching an iron bar in imitation of a fish’s spine, Daedalus grew so envious he threw Perdix off a tower. But the goddess Athena saw Perdix falling and saved his life by transforming him into a partridge.”

“So in this case ‘going to live with your cousin Perdix’ is a euphemism for ‘dying swiftly and suddenly because your dad can’t handle being upstaged by his smarter, more creative offspring’?” Tony said dryly.

“Daedalus insists that this was not the case. _It was not Athena who gave Perdix his wings, but I. I gave him the power to fly to freedom, to home. My dearest son, you cannot believe I intended to harm him or you._ ”

Icarus was crying now, choking out accusatory sentences between convulsive sobs. Daedalus’ voice through the _daidalon_ was soft, tender, conscience-stricken.

“ _You abandoned me here_ ,” JARVIS translated. “ _You don’t know what they did to me, how everyone at the children’s home taunted me and mocked me, called me a ‘freak’ and a ‘mutant’. And then the soldiers captured me, and never did they allow me a moment’s respite from the torment of their experiments. They cut open my skin to watch me heal, but that was only the beginning. They chopped off my finger. They sliced open my stomach and studied me like a rat in a trap. The pain was agonizing, and I begged and pleaded with them to stop, but they wouldn’t listen. I cried for you to rescue me every day, and you never came_.” With those words, Icarus lost the ability to speak, wracked with tears.

“ _My son, my dear, precious son, please say this is not true. I would give anything for this not to be true. Have I been the cause of so much suffering for you? I beg you, please believe that I never wished this for you._ ”

JARVIS’s voice was perfectly toneless and flat, but the meaning of those words devastated Jane. This poor kid, left in Hydra’s hands to be experimented upon -- the thought was unbearable.

More than anything else, Jane had always hated seeing families fight. The way her stomach twisted inside of her as this heartbreaking scene unfolded was even worse than the fear that had gripped her during the _daidalon_ ’s attack, but she could not look away. 

“ _Then why -- why did you send me away?_ ” Icarus cried.

“ _Because we had been trapped in King Minos’ realm for all your life. It was a gilded prison, to be sure; we never lacked for food or shelter or the other necessities of life. You were such a kind, cheerful child, perhaps you never noticed the guards around the palace served as much to keep us in, as to keep attackers out_.

“ _I knew I could never leave, because I alone possessed the key to escaping the Labyrinth, and King Minos would tear apart every realm in every possible dimension to prevent me from revealing it to anyone. But you, he did not care about. You and Perdix could be smuggled to Olympus, where you would be free to live your lives as you pleased_.”

Daedalus fell silent, and the only noises Jane could hear were the wind whipping across the roof and Icarus’ soft, wounded cries.

Captain America shifted uncomfortably on his feet, looking back and forth between Icarus and the _daidalon_. He sat down on the side of the bed, setting his shield down in an easily accessible spot by his feet, and placed an arm around Icarus’ shoulders. “You’re okay now,” he said.

Thor repeated the sentiment. “You are safe with us, Icarus.”

Icarus only wept harder, shoulders shaking with the force of it.

“ _My dearest, only child_ ,” Daedalus said, “ _I beg of you, never doubt my love for you. Tell me this much, that you understand that the miseries you have suffered were only a cruel, vicious trick of the Fates, and that I will never again allow anything to ever harm you. But say the word, and I will raze this world to the ground to destroy those who lay hands on you._ ”

The humans on the roof snapped back to high alert, but Thor stepped between them and the _daidalon_ , hands raised in a placating gesture.

“I beseech you, clever Daedalus, do not let this entire planet bear the punishment for the actions of a malicious few. I promise you on my honor as a prince of Asgard that they are, on the whole, a generous and welcoming people. If you wish it, I shall also pledge my good name to the cause of escorting Icarus safely to Olympus. Let me take him to see Heimdall, sentry of the Bifrost, who has conveyed diplomatic envoys between Olympus and Asgard many times throughout the years. If any being in any realm knows a way past the barriers around Olympus, surely it is he.”

“ _That_...” Daedalus said slowly, “... _is acceptable to me_.”

Iron Man crossed his arms over his chest and jutted out a hip, challenging. “And what if the kid doesn’t want to go? Seeing as Daddy’s plan worked out so well _last_ time, I’m willing to offer him free room and board here in the Tower for as long as he likes. I’ll get him a maid and a valet, install a swimming pool, buy him a puppy. He’ll be living in the lap of luxury.”

Captain America nodded determinedly. “This should be his choice. Thor, ask Icarus what he wants to do. But make sure he knows he doesn’t have to decide right now. He can stay here as long as he wants.”

Thor did so, and Icarus spat, “ _The River Acheron swallow me and this entire godsforsaken planet if I remain here any longer. I will go to Olympus_.”

“It is decided, then,” Thor said. “I will take you hence forthwith.”

“ _May this **daidalon** accompany you in your journey? It would be of great comfort to me to know my son is safe,_ ” Daedalus asked.

“ _No!_ ” Icarus shouted. “ _Get that monstrous doll away from me. You’ve already done enough, **father**_.”

“ _...as you wish_ ,” Daedalus said finally.

That settled, everyone could finally relax their guard. Jane fumbled open her seatbelt and climbed over Darcy and Clint, ignoring their cries of “Hey, ouch!” in her haste to jump out of the helicopter and into Thor’s arms.

“I hate to say goodbye so soon,” she said, grasping his cloak in both hands like she would never let go.

“I too regret the suddenness of my departure, Jane,” Thor said, stroking her hair. “I will return as soon as I can.”

She squeezed him tight for one more second before releasing him. Dr. Banner had gotten out of the helicopter as well, and was now unhooking Icarus from the IVs and other equipment.

Iron Man made sure to stay right between the _daidalon_ and the rest of them the entire time. His face mask could not show emotions, of course, but something about the way he tilted his chin screamed ‘belligerence’.

When Icarus had been disentangled from all the wires, Thor gently lifted him in one arm, raising Mjolnir with the other. “Farewell, my dearest Jane,” he said, and she offered him a sad wave.

The _daidalon_ , too, offered its goodbyes, but Icarus turned his face into Thor’s shoulder, ignoring it completely. There was a flash of thunder, a roll of lightning, and with a shockwave that nearly knocked Jane off her feet, they were gone.

They all stood around for a moment, a little awkwardly. Then Tony snapped at the _daidalon_ , “Your kid’s gone. Feel free to get off my roof now. Also feel free to pay me back for all the property damage you’ve caused. Although from the looks of things, repairing the damage that you’ve caused isn’t your strong point, so I won’t hold my breath on that front.”

JARVIS said something in Greek, although it was a lot shorter that what Tony had said, and hopefully a good deal more diplomatic.

“ _I must rebuild his wings_ ,” Daedalus mused. “ _I will have to send a **daidalon** to Olympus to deliver the new ones in a few months. Do you think he will have forgiven me by then?_ ”

Falcon said, carefully and diplomatically, “It can be very difficult for the families of people who have suffered trauma. Relationships between parents and kids, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, may never been the same again. But it’s important that we keep in mind what’s best for Icarus here. Will he be able to heal in Olympus?”

“ _He will dine on ambrosia and nectar in the company of gods. No place in time or space could provide him better care._ ”

“Then be happy for him as he recovers,” Falcon said. “And be patient. Maybe someday he’ll want to talk to you again. But it’ll be on his own time, when he’s ready.”

The statue was silent for so long that Jane jumped when it finally spoke again. “ _This **daidala** will deactivate now. In three hours and forty-six minutes, I will be able to open a new portal to summon it home._ ”

It slumped, like a marionette whose strings had been cut, then collapsed to the ground with an ear-splitting clang of metal. It did not move again.

*****

Steve ordered them to be downstairs in the kitchen by 11 A.M. the next morning for “debriefing”, by which he meant “pancakes”, because Steve was a better leader than he sometimes gave himself credit for. He stood at the stove stirring batter with an “I Grill To Thrill” apron over his usual shirt and chinos; Sam suspected he was leaving himself open to days of mockery from Clint and Tony as a masterful tactic for getting everyone to laugh.

An absolutely obscene amount of pancakes, syrup, eggs, bacon, sausage, fruit, juice, and coffee having been consumed, they dragged themselves to the home theater down the hall for a movie marathon, and Sam began a little debriefing of his own.

“You think Icarus is ever going to forgive his father?” he asked casually, about twenty minutes into _Toy Story_ , as Woody and Buzz desperately struggled to escape the green alien squeeze toy machine.

Tony gave a derisive “Ha! Hold on to that bitterness, kid, it’s the only thing that will keep you warm, some nights.”

That was no surprise; Sam suspected it wouldn’t take much convincing to get Tony to hire a plane to spell out “DADDY ISSUES” across the New York skyline. But Tony was here with them now, not holing up in his lab, and appeared to have gotten at least four hours of sleep, so he was okay. Ish.

Steve frowned. “My pa died when I was a baby. I don’t really remember him.”

Bruce’s tone, when he spoke, was hesitant, self-conscious. “My dad… he drank a lot. And when he drank, he got ugly. He’d hit me and my mom sometimes. It’s hard, forgiving a parent for hurting you like that.”

Clint whistled. “Makes me grateful that I don’t really remember my parents either. They died in a car accident when I was a kid. My brother Barney and I were in an orphanage for a while, but we ran away to the circus. Most days I feel thankful to have been raised by lions.”

Sam said, “Hey, not all parents are awful. My upbringing was pretty normal. My dad was a minister and my mom was a stay-at-home mom, and they raised me right.”

“Geez, no wonder you’re so sickeningly well-balanced most days,” Clint groused.

There was a lull in the conversation, and then Natasha said softly, “My father gave me up to the Russian government for espionage training.”

When everyone turned and blinked at her in surprise, she raised her chin and met their eyes levelly. Steve held her gaze straight-on and nodded once, a gesture of respect and gratitude.

“Aren’t we all a bunch of special little damaged snowflakes,” Tony commented wryly.

“It says a lot about us, doesn’t it, that we jumped immediately to the assumption that Daedalus was a threat to his son,” Steve pensively remarked.

“Yeah,” Bruce said with a sigh.

“We know you’re not-so-secretly psychoanalyzing us over there, Dr. Shrink,” Clint said to Sam. “So, your turn. Spill the beans. Feeling any crazier than usual lately?”

Sam smiled. “Nope, no crazier than usual. In fact, I think things are going pretty damn well for me.” He settled deeper into the sofa, draping his arms along the back and kicking his feet up onto the coffee table. He shot everyone a cheerful grin where they lay curled up on various soft surfaces, loose and drowsy with over-full stomachs.

“Sickening,” Clint muttered.

Natasha kicked him. “Shhh! This is the best part.”

  
**THE END**

 

“I had a dream about you. We were both flying through the sky like we had wings of cement. We had all the aerodynamics of a brick, but what propelled us was our love for each other. ”  
\-- Jarod Kintz


End file.
